GE Appliances will invest $490 million at its Appliance Park manufacturing campus in Louisville, KY, to create an advanced assembly line for clothes washers. Photo courtesy GE Appliances 

LOUISVILLE, KY—GE Appliances, a Haier company, will invest $490 million at its Appliance Park manufacturing campus here to create an advanced assembly line for clothes washers. The project will bring production of the GE Profile UltraFast combo washer-dryer and the GE Profile UltraFresh front-load washer lineup to Kentucky, creating 800 new, full-time jobs.

This investment positions the company to become the biggest American washer manufacturer and builds on GE Appliances’ 10-year, $3.5 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing.

“We are bringing laundry production to our global headquarters in Louisville because manufacturing in the U.S. is fundamental to our ‘zero-distance’ business strategy to make appliances as close as possible to our customers and consumers,” said Kevin Nolan, president and CEO of GE Appliances. “This decision is our most recent product reshoring and aligns with the current economic and policy environment.”

This investment will move production of more than 15 models of front-load washers to Building 2 at Appliance Park, bringing the total area dedicated to production of washers and dryers to the equivalent of 33 football fields. Next door, Building 1 at Appliance Park produces top-load washers and front-load dryers.

Building 2 will be redesigned as a model factory, showcasing the latest in automation, robotics, and material-handling technologies, including automated guided vehicles and autonomous mobile robots. The plant is vertically integrated and will include in-house manufacturing of critical parts, such as stainless-steel baskets and cabinets, high-precision metal stamping and forming, and injection-molding and production equipment. The new manufacturing lines will open in 2027.

“Manufacturing in Louisville puts production closer to our designers, engineers and consumers so that together we can create our most innovative laundry platforms,” said Lee Lagomarcino, vice president of clothes care at GE Appliances. “The team has already developed new solutions for American households and can’t wait to get started making them.” 

The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority preliminarily approved performance-based incentives in support of the project under the Kentucky Business Investment program, workforce training grants through the Kentucky Skills Network, and funds to support the modernizing the building. Final amounts will be determined upon GE Appliances meeting job retention and investment targets. 

GE Appliances’ work to design, manufacture and service appliances across America contributes $30.2 billion to the U.S. economy. GE Appliances’ investment of $3 billion in plant and equipment, R&D, new product development and logistics over the previous eight years is greater than any other appliance company in America. These investments have helped to double the size of the company, create more than 4,000 direct jobs, and foster an additional 98,000 jobs with suppliers, customers and other companies. 

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